They never talked about it, but for the next three days the Dance of the Damned bunked down in the Port of Bezantur, and Dania and Keowan bunked down together in her room at the Randy Mermaid. Personally, Dania thought that it would probably last a few months, and then both of their eyes would start wandering again, but she took comfort in the company of the familiar.
On the third day, Captain Cullygan rounded up the crew. Two had deserted, but there were a couple of skinny fifteen year olds from the docks eager to sign on. They were siblings, one male and one female, but both were the same shape and the same level of filthy and Dania frankly couldn't tell which was which. They learned quickly what they were expected to do and when. They left port on the morning of the fourth day, Dania scrambling up the rigging faster and with less pain than she ever had.
The intelligence gathered in Bezantur all pointed to one place – the river trade routes of Rashemen. The first mate, a grizzled old dwarf aptly named Bull Stonefoot, didn't like the idea of taking the sea-faring Dance of the Damned up a river with a crew that had little experience in doing so. They consulted with Keowan, who said he could probably navigate a river without too much trouble, and Captain Cullygan made the call that whatever magical goods they could steal from a Rashemi witchboat would make whatever trouble they went to worth it. Stonefoot knew better than to cross Cullygan, and so went along with the plan.
Keowan, who had been invited to the meeting, relayed the plan to the rest of the crew. Dania was itching for a fight, having managed to avoid one their entire time on shore, and test her newly healed leg, and she had heard that the Rashemi employed fierce warriors on their ships.
The storm blew in when they had nearly reached the mouth of the river Lapendrar, which would, if the charts spoke true, take them through Thay and up into Lake Mulsantir in the Heart of Rashemen. Dania was alone on watch, walking the deck in an endless circle, lantern dangling from her hand. First the wind kicked up and the rain started. She thought nothing of it at first, but soon the seas grew rough and the ship lurched from side to side. She would have run to awaken the crew if half of them had not been knocked right out of bed. She'd been in storms before, of course, but something about this one felt different, unnatural somehow.
"Take the sails down!" the cry came from belowdecks. Captain Cullygan scrambled up above and shouted, "For fuck's sake get the sails down!"
Sailor scrambled to the lines and Adahni scrambled up to make sure it was disentangled. The foresails came down without incident, but the topsails would have to come down as well. By now, the rain was driving down in sheets. Sailors unlashed the yardlines, but something was tangled up at the top of the mast, and the sails were not coming down. She kicked off her boots to give her feet more traction and ran to the rigging to climb aloft and unlash the yard from the top of the mast. She was buffeted this way and that by the wind and the rolling of the ship, but managed to cling tight to the riggings. She was also able to get the topsails untangled, and the crew as able to lower them.
She did not, however, think to look out for the yard to come crashing down on her head as she tried to make her way back down. Nor did she bank on the ship rolling just at the right moment so as to throw her semi-conscious body clear of the ship and into the dark waters of the Sea of Fallen Stars.
Davy the black wolf-dog jumped right in after her, catching hold of the collar of her shirt and dragging her head up and out of the waves. She could hear the sailors shouting as though they were very far away indeed. Even the rushing of the water in her ears was distant. She summoned all her strength to make out the ship in the dark. Lightning flashed, and the image of the Dance of the Damned tossed this way and that in the waves told her that swimming to its side would be the more dangerous of her options.
The black shoreline lay to her north, within eyeshot even when the lightning was not making the sky bright as day. Davy had the same idea, and with her collar still in his teeth, swam for the mouth of the river and shore.
Many times in her life had the rush of energy that came with feeling certain death breathing down her neck had saved her life. This time was no different. She and the dog reached the shoreline before she realized how deep the cut on her head was and how much blood she must have lost, swimming hard against the stormy seas. Out of certain danger, she crawled away from the river, up onto a high sand dune. The world had started to go fuzzy around the edges, and she knew she could not maintain consciousness for long. The best she could hope for was to try to get away from where the tide would reach her once it rose. Far away, she heard Davy barking, trying to summon the crew that was clinging to its life aboard the schooner far off shore. There was nothing she could do for them, though. . Laying her head in the coarse sea grass, she lost consciousness entirely.
"Well hello, Miss Farishta!" Lord Nasher said. She was standing in the foyer of one of the grand houses in Neverwinter. It looked like the Collector's mansion in the merchant district, but was decorated differently, "May I take your coat?"
She complied, unpinning the broach which held her cloak around her neck. The bald lord of Neverwinter took it and hung it on a peg for her. She looked down at herself. She was wearing a fashionable gown of dark red velvet and, for some reason, a pair of boots she had owned when she was a child in West Harbor. She followed Lord Nasher into the sitting room of the house.
"Dinner is almost ready," he said, "You've arrived just in time."
Around the fire were sitting Ammon Jerro, Sir Nevalle, Retta Starling, and Marcus, the boy from Ember. They all smiled to see her. Sir Nevalle got up and handed her a goblet. She looked into it. The wine inside was thick as she swirled it around, and she did not take a drink.
"Did you hear about the porcupines?" Mrs. Starling asked, "I hear they are simply ravishing this time of year. And the violins grow on trees!"
"Yes, I have," she replied.
"Your boots are made of fish," Ammon Jerro said, smiling grandly.
"Monkeys. Ubiquitous monkeys," Sir Nevalle said.
"Umbrella tongue," replied Ammon Jerro.
"Dinner!" called Lord Nasher.
She took Sir Nevalle's arm, and he escorted her to a grand dining room that was entirely too large for the house where it stood. The lights set into the walls were not normal lamps, but the crystalline ghost lights she had seen at the Ruins of Arvahn when she had visited in search of the Statues of Purification two years before. She sat at the table, putting her goblet down in front of her. She could smell it now, and there was no mistaking the stench of blood that it gave off. The chairs were hard like stone, though they looked to be upholstered in fine velvet. In the center there was a large platter holding large slabs of meat.
"What is that?" she asked, taking a slice and biting into it. Blood ran down her chin as she chewed.
"It's you!" Marcus declared. He lifted the cover on one of the dishes, and she was looking into her own face, lying dead on a platter with an apple between her teeth.
What the fuck… she thought, and began to retch. The group seated around the table all began to laugh at her as she doubled over.
She woke herself this way, vomiting what seemed like gallons of sea water mixed with whiskey and hardtack onto the ground. The ground, though, was not the soft sand of the mouth of the Lapendrar, but cold stones. When her stomach was empty, she looked around, but could see nothing, She squinted her eyes, and was able to summon the light of the aasimar. It hovered somewhere above her head, and she saw that she was underground, in a tunnel that had had bricks set into it. The patterns looked ancient.
"Davy!" she called, "Davy! Where are you?"
The dog did not answer her. Davy never failed to answer her. If she called him and he didn't appear by her side, it meant that he had not followed her to this dark place.
Her body ached all over. The gash that the falling yard had left on the top of her head had not closed, but the bleeding had slowed. She did, though, have to pick crusts of dried blood out of her eyelashes in order to see clearly.
Was it all a dream? She thought, Have I been dying slowly in a ruin underneath the Mere while my mind took me aboard the Dance of the Damned? Did Bishop just leave me to die there like he ought to have?
She looked around. With the blurring blood out of her eyes, she could see the designs in the walls. No, they were not Illefarn designs. She looked down at herself, and she was wearing the cotton shirt with the buttons and the rough woven pants that all the sailors were. Her feet were bare from her journey up the rigging and down into the sea. She was dry, though, so it must have been some time since she'd come, or been brought, here indoors from the bank of the river.
"Shhh, stay still."
The voice came from behind her. She tried to turn, but her neck was terribly stiff, and she imagined that the falling yard had knocked something out of place there as well as in her head. She felt hands on her head, and felt a familiar pulsing sensation, accompanied by a soft, female voice murmuring some kind of spell. She felt her neckbones realign themselves, the aches go out of her head and body, and the great gash atop her head close.
"Who in the hells are you?" she asked, breaking away from the touch and turning to see someone vaguely familiar kneeling behind her. She was young, twenty-two or three perhaps, and bald as a child, with runes tattooed on her scalp in an intricate pattern. She was not dressed warmly enough for this chilly cavern, but seemed comfortable in her red robe. Red robe. Oh good gods, she thought, that woman's a Red Wizard of Thay! I'm fucked.
"I could ask you the same thing," the red wizard said.
"My name is Dania," she said, "Dania D'Shadizar, I'm the shantyman aboard the Dance of the Damned, it's a trading vessel out of Luskan."
"Now now," the red wizard said, "We both know that that's not true. The Dance of the Damned is a pirate ship captained by a Neverese Halfling. And your name is not Dania, I can see the lie in your eyes."
She sighed. "All right. My name is Adahni Farishta. But I am the shantyman board the Dance of the Damned."
"So you are a pirate!" the red wizard exclaimed, clapping her hands together, "How delightful."
"Are you going to take me back?" Dania – Adahni; there was no point in keeping up the façade at this point – asked, "I can offer you gold to tell them I've perished. I'm quite a wealthy woman, despite my current appearance."
"I assure you I have no idea what you're talking about, Adahni, and I've no interest in whoever the hells it is you think I'd be turning you into – though if you really are a pirate, I imagine any number of coastal city states have an interest in hanging you," the red wizard said, "But I do not. I do have an interest in assisting you. Right now, I think the only thing to do is to get out of this place of dead things."
Adahni didn't move. It was almost a relief, being called by her real name and realizing that it had no meaning here, far from the Sword Coast.
"Why should I trust you?" she asked, "You haven't even told me your name."
"Safiya," the red wizard said, "My name is Safiya. Can you walk?"
Adahni rose, not feeling the familiar drag of her left leg. Of course, she thought, the bald woman in Bezantur who healed my leg! She looked closely at Safiya, and determined that it was not, in fact, the same person.
"Are all red wizards bald?" she asked, "With those runic tattoos?"
"Yes," Safiya said, "It's part of our rites."
"Do you know a woman named Tenisha?" she asked, "I think she's a Red Wizard too."
"Do you know a man named Fyldrin?" she asked, "I think he's a pirate too. We don't all know each other, you know."
"Oh please, I know that your little cabal comes from a set number of academies here in Thay. Anyway, since you know so much about me, evidently, you know that I'm not from anywhere even remotely near here and would not know any of the Thayan pirates. Haven't even crossed swords with a one yet."
"Rashemen," Safiya corrected her, "We're in Rashemen, not Thay. But you caught me. There is a chance I know a Tenisha. My mother is the mistress of an academy of Red Wizards in Thaymount. But, we may talk about these things later. This place is full of spirits. We must be gone from here. Where is your sword? Don't pirates carry swords?"
"Sword?" Adahni asked, "You try swimming for shore in the middle of a typhoon sometime and tell me if you'd like to be carrying several pounds of iron with you while you do it."
Safiya snorted derisively. "You're lucky we're in an Imaskar barrow. Many warriors have been buried here with their weapons. From what I have heard about you, I don't imagine you have many scruples about robbing graves."
"Many people have heard many things about me," Adahni said, "I doubt any of them are fully true."
"I see you fancy yourself an enigma," the red wizard said, "Very well, if that's how you'd like to be, I won't argue with you. Let's press on. The sooner we get above ground, the better."
Adahni sighed. Having no choice, she followed Safiya's retreating back into the darkness.